"Alyce!"

The name came out a strangled toad croak.

"Thomas."

Hammers of darkness pounded his brain. Hands as light as the wings of moths tried to bear him up. A voice asked, "What's wrong, Moyshe?" from several light-years away.

Despite the additional impact of seeing the woman in the flesh, the episode ended in seconds. Cold, shaking, benRabi fought for self-control.

She deposited her behind on the filthy window sill. Her breath came in shallow, difficult gasps. Her face remained curiously immobile despite its obvious effort to portray a variety of emotions.

Shock? he wondered.

He looked inside himself.

He was shocked. Shivering, he tumbled into a dusty old chair, stared at this impossible ghost of a romance past. His thoughts swooped and whirled through a realm of chaos. His soul cried in torment as it had done so constantly during his ancient introduction to the Seiners. All the demons he had thought fettered with his starfish's help were now breaking their chains and howling up from their dungeons. The inexplicable mind-symbol he called the image of the gun flashed in and out of existence like some barbarous neon advertisement for mental disease.

He did not pass out again. Neither did he regain his emotional feet. He fought what was happening in his head, fending it while trying to analyze.

There was something a little changed about all those old spooks. They were not quite identical with their predecessors. Had time eroded them? Helped them grow older and more mellow? What?

"Moyshe? What the hell is wrong?" Klaus demanded. "Woman, what did you do to him?"

Moyshe heard. He did not respond. What could he do? What could he say? To Klaus or Alyce. He had not expected to see her again, ever, even in the tight social environment of Luna Command. Certainly not out here on the fringes of Confederation, a thousand lights from the scene of their passion and pain. It was too wildly implausible a coincidence... Yet there she sat, as agonizingly real as death itself.

He ground the heels of his hands Into his temples, feeling the precursor pain of a savage headache. He gripped his stomach where his half-forgotten ulcer was coming to sudden, unpleasant life. His thoughts churned and sprayed like wild white water. His very brain seemed to be sliding on its foundations. Barriers came crashing down. Viewpoints shifted. If he did not grab something as he whipped past, his soul would be left a fanged wasteland as lovely and desolate as a bombed-out city.

He caught a glimmer of what was happening. He shied off like a whipped dog. He clamped down, shoving a hundred mental fingers into the sodden dikes. If he could just hold on till he found Mouse...

"How are you?" Alyce asked.

Her voice was different. It was older. Less musical. More hardened by life.

Her question had no meaning. It was just noise meant to break a fearful silence. He did not immediately respond. His men watched him with wonder and uncertainty, uncomfortably aware that they were on the brink of seeing a soul laid bare.

"I'm fine," Moyshe finally mumbled. "How're you?"

"Okay, now." But she was not. She was shaking violently. It was a common reaction to stunner shock. She would be feeling as cold as he.

"Why were those men shooting at you?" he asked, trying to gain some stability by concentrating on business. "What're you doing here?"

"It was a girl, Thomas. With your hair and eyes."

"Shut her up!"

It began to twist and burn. Down deep inside, the dikes began to give. The demons howled and laughed. That insane image of the gun thing superimposed itself over Alyce's face. "Mike!" he gasped. "Take two men outside and keep an eye out for McGraws."

His second desperate attempt to achieve stability failed. The dikes were bulging inward. "Why're you here?" he squeaked.

"I thought it was all dead," she said. "I thought I'd forgotten it. But I can't, Thomas. Go away. Leave me alone."

Leave her alone? Yes. Fine. But how did he get her to leave him alone?

"Lady, the Chief asked a question," his man Nicolas growled. "Answer up."

"Easy, Nick. No rough stuff. This's personal, not business."

He spoke too late.

"Not business?" Snake-swift, the Seiner laid a hand alongside the woman's face. The blow hurled her to the floor. He caught her hair as she fell, yanked. She screamed, but her cry did not register with Moyshe.

What did was her hair, face, and throat coming away in Nicolas's hand. The Seiner raised his trophy like the shrunken, wrinkled head of a Cyclops. The unmasked woman seemed vaguely familiar, but she was not benRabi's old haunt.

"Moyshe, you done been set up."

BenRabi could not stifle a squeaky little laugh. "I done been, Nick."

Nicolas wheeled on the woman. "You start talking. What kind of game are you playing?"

"Don't bother, Nick. We won't get anything. We don't have the equipment." There were no tears in the woman's eyes now. She showed nothing but apprehension. Moyshe added, "I don't know if it would be worth the trouble anyway."

He did not need equipment. Despite the chaotic state of his mind, a strong suspicion blossomed. Someone was working on him. He had a good idea who, and why.

"Hey, Moyshe," another of the men called. "Mike says we got trouble. McGraws. A dozen or so. Out by the carrier."

He was regaining his composure. "It was a trap. But it didn't go according to plan." He turned to the woman. "The pirates weren't in the script, were they?"

To his surprise, she responded. She shook her head.

"You tell the Old Man to get him a better makeup crew. Nick, we've got to get out of here. See if you can get Kindervoort on Tac Two. Tell him I need a pickup squad. We'll let the Corps worry about their carrier."

He had cobbled together a false peace within him. He knew it would not last. He had to finish fast. He would begin crumbling again soon. The one straw too many had been thrown into the camel's back. From here on in each period of tranquility would be just one more frantic holding action doomed to eventual failure. The decay would accelerate whenever the survival pressure slackened.

He had seen it all before, in fellow agents. He was entering the initial stages of a spontaneous, uncontrolled, unsupervised personality program debriefing. It could get rough. There were so many identities in his background that he could lose his anchor to any of them.

"What about the woman?" Nicolas asked.

"Leave her. She's not the enemy."

"Moyshe," said another, "Jarl says to meet him by Jellyroll Jones. You know what he means?"

"Yeah. It's a statue in the old park. Pass the word to Mike. He knows the place. Nick, lead off. Keep close, guys." He turned to the woman. "Good-bye." He could not think of anything else to say.

She shrugged, but seemed relieved.

They slid out the back way, ran through a block of shadows. BenRabi began to worry about the time. He had been away from his job too long. How much longer? But it looked easy...

There was a shot and a shout.

A second slug ricocheted off brick near benRabi. Cobblestones became arrowheads piercing his chest as he tried to get closer to the soil.

Shades of his last visit to The Broken Wings, he thought.

His men returned the fire, their lasebeams scoring the brick of the walls of the buildings flanking the alley where the ambusher crouched.

"Come on!" benRabi snarled. "Shoot at him, dammit!" A fourth slug kicked chips of alley and lead into his face. He wiped at tiny pearls of blood, wondered why the assassin was concentrating on him. Was he Marya's man?

Where was Jarl? Where were Mike and his men?

"Dammit, you guys, don't you know this ain't a goddamned game?"

And where was Mouse, who had started this mess by disappearing? Emotion began to rage through him again, undirected and confused. He tried to control it, failed. His personality program resumed its dissolution. The only anchor left him was a hard, red hot anger.